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The Invasion
Invasion of the B S
2007
Review: August 24, 2007
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam
Won’t do you much good.
THE SETUP:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only this time with no pods and a really dumb idea.
DISCUSSION:
I have no problem with a fourth version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers… in fact, the story is such a good framework for topical examination of society, I wouldn’t be unhappy if there was a new version every ten years. Unfortunately, what this version conveys is one of the trends I noticed in my What Remakes Say essay, that is, a large-scale retreat from all but the most superficial ideas.
So you heard that this film was originally directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, but his version was deemed a slow-burning psychological thriller [translation: not enough car chases], so producer Joel Silver brought in the Wachowskis [of Matrix fame] and their bud James McTiegue [director of V for Vendetta] to punch it up with some hardcore action! Allllright!
We open in this pharmacy, with Nicole Kidman searching for pills that will keep her awake, while we hear supposed-to-be-ominous whispers on the soundtrack. Then we transition to the space shuttle breaking up in the atmosphere, and finally crashing. Jeremy Northam [nice to see him again] is the head of the CDC and finds this gloop on the wreckage, gets a cut, and is infected immediately. An assistant tells him that the gloop was “able to withstand the bitter cold of space and the searing heat of re-entry.” Hmmm, maybe that assistant needs to cut down on his adjectives.
That night, in case we didn’t get it, we see Northam all covered in glop while he’s asleep. Turns out he’s divorced from Nicole Kidman as Carol, and suddenly wants expanded visitation rights with their son Ollie. Carol has a friend and admirer in Daniel Craig’s Ben. She’s visited in her office by Veronica Cartwright [of the Philip Kaufman version], who claims that her husband is not her husband. She says her husband brutally murdered their dog, and you want to say “And did you call the ASPCA? There are laws against that, you know!” but instead Carol only vamps and does her breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. She doesn’t strike me as the greatest therapist, frankly.
Well, it’s Halloween, and Ollie gets a lot of gloop in his candy. She and Ben take it to Jeffery Wright in the lab, and he need merely look at it under a microscope to see that it contains spores that alter and replicate DNA. Then they’re off to a dinner where this Russian expounds on how if humanity had peace we wouldn’t be human anymore, name-checks Iraq, Darfur, and Katrina, and talks about how the “thin veneer” of civilization hides man’s true hostility. Not-so-sub subtext delivered, we can move on to the attacks and vomiting! But not before Carol can tell us that she’s a “postmodern feminist.”
SPOILERS > > >
She gets attacked in her home, then tries to go pick up Ollie in the morning. Tucker [that’s Jeremy] has a bunch of ominous people around and they hold Carol down and puke on her. That’s how they transmit. Then she and Ben and Jeffery go see this guy from the night before, who is now all covered in slime. These supposed doctors come right in the room and touch the guy with no surgical masks or gloves. Blah, blah, blah we find out that people who suffered from this condition called ADEM are immune, and Ollie’s one of them. So Dad's the head of the CDC and their son is one of the rare immune ones—what a coinkidink! In here are all those scenes where Nicole is trying to act emotionless in order to fit in with the aliens. We hear on the news that North Korea and India have signed nuclear disarmament agreements, no more suicide attacks in Kabul, Darfur is all better, the US and Venezuela are good buddies now, and—this was my favorite—the Pharmaceutical companies have decided to issue free HIV drugs around the world. Quite a day for news! Then she finds Ollie and escapes, leading to more and more chases.
She ends up back at the pharmacy from the beginning, where Ollie is required to give her a shot directly into her heart [think Pulp Fiction] to wake her up. Um, isn’t it kind of difficult to ram a needle through the breastplate? No big. There are also a bunch of transforming people locked in an employees-only area that for some reason locks from the outside. Is this like a Wal-Mart, where they lock their employees in at night? Blah, blah, chase, chase, Nicole and son get rescued, they instantly create a cure, literally crop-dust the entire world with the cure, and everything’s better again! The infected don’t even remember their time as aliens. Oh, except that I forgot to mention the part where we learn how Carol used to wish to be a majestic pine tree.
So five days after the invasion is over all the wars and conflict are back on again, and Carol has a moment in the kitchen where she reflects on the sage words of the Russian who said that war is what makes us human. Jeffery Wright shows up [on TV] again to deliver the same message: “Look at the papers. We’re human again.” Ya know, this shit is really making me THINK.
< < < SPOILERS END
When I walked out of this, I was like, that wasn’t BAD, it was just terribly mediocre. Because it was just bland, with a bunch of nondescript chases, etc. But when I started to think about ALL the rich material the current world offers up for sci-fi satire: antidepressants, consumerism, declining education, Fox News, celebrity fascination, working-class millionaires… and they decide to make their movie about THIS? War makes us human? Okay, even if we leave aside all the interesting aspects of society they could have made the movie about, “War makes us human” comes off as sophomoric. Because—and I hate to sound the slightest bit warm-hearted and optimistic—but there is a lot else, much of it good, that makes us human as well. Which is not even to engage in how offensive it is, DURING a war, to imply that it’s all somehow okay because if we weren’t at war we’d know something was wrong? Did Joel Silver give this script to his middle-school age son and ask him to finish it? The other thing is that this whole “message” seems tacked-on only because someone read somewhere that the body snatchers films have messages. Aaargh!!
Other than that, stupid, shoddily put-together [I haven’t even mentioned the pointless flash-forwards that serve no purpose], and wholly mediocre. And now we’ve got all this rich material for a body snatchers movie, but after this one there won’t be another one for quite a while. Ugh.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
I wouldn't even bother, and you know what, it'll hold up fine on DVD.
